I. The Backlash: When Social Media Becomes the Story When Slipknot announced their 2027 (sic)est Stadium Tour , with Marilyn Manson opening the Wembley Stadium show and joining them for the South American dates, including The Town in São Paulo, the reaction was almost immediate. Thousands of comments appeared beneath the announcement, many from people saying they would no longer attend. Some described the decision as disappointing, others said they would not spend money on a concert that included Manson, and some presented the booking as a betrayal of what they believed Slipknot represented. The reaction was real, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. What interests me, however, is what happens after that initial reaction: how it is collected, amplified, repeated by music publications, and gradually transformed from a collection of individual responses into something that can begin to look like a universal verdict from “the fans.” The current coverage makes that process fairly e...
Throughout his career, Marilyn Manson has been asked by various interviewers about things he regrets, and in lyrics of his songs he has talked about both regretting and not regretting, but the last time he was asked about his regrets was in 2019, in an interview for the German magazine Numero Homme Berlin (Spring/Summer 2019) for which he graced the cover. I translated his response below: Sina Braetz: Looking back, what do you regret most about your life? Marilyn Manson: I regret that I was naive enough to let people believe that my kindness was weakness and that I allowed them to take advantage of it. Many people believed that I was actually stupid or naive because I was so friendly and they betrayed me. But that was my fault, not theirs. That's why I regret not having been competent enough to understand that my desire to have companionable friendship - or whatever you want to call it - to have friends or family, made me make a lot of mistakes that I wish I hadn't made. Bu...